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Thursday, January 23, 2020

How strange is the Trinity?

Is the Trinity an apparent contradiction? Let's take a comparison. It's natural for humans to reason counterfactually. Indeed, the ability to contemplate hypothetical scenarios is part of what makes human intelligence human.

That includes self-referential counterfactuals. I can say I'd turn out differently if I grew up on a ranch rather than the big city. Or if I grew up in France or Italy instead of the USA. Or if my mother or father died when I was ten. Or if I was an only child instead of having two brothers. Or if my brother committed suicide when we were teenagers. And so on and so forth.

Changing key variables in my past changes the kind of person I will be come. But that in turn raises questions of personal identity and numerical identity. Am I the same individual under these counterfactual scenarios? Do the same individual experience these alternate past scenarios? Is it one of me or two of me or three of me? Are these variations on what a given individual could be? Alternate versions of me? It doesn't seem reducible to yes or no. 

This, of course, is the stuff of science fiction. I travel through a wormhole and meet the other me in a parallel universe. Which is the real me? Are we one and the same individual? Are there two of us? 

On the one hand, as we spend more time together, we find out how much alike we are. How much we have in common. On the other hand, we also find out how unalike we are. 

It's not just a case of me taking one fork in the road, then taking the other fork in the road. For which fork in the road is taken changes the traveler. Not just the road traveled but what it does to the traveler. I'm the same when I begin at the fork in the road. But am I the same at the end of the journey if I go left rather than right? Do I come out the other end the same individual who went in, compared to taking the road not taken? 


My immediate point is that when you think about counterfactuals and parallel universe scenarios, the Trinity no longer seems so alien to reason. I'm not saying the Trinity is directly parallel to transworld identity. Rather, I'm saying they raise similar issues regarding the complexities of personal and numerical identity. 

1 comment:

  1. Often you hear Muslims say when Jesus spoke to God, was he talking to himself?

    In the movie Looper the old version and young version of the same character meet and talk.

    In the remake of star trek, young and old Spock meet and talk.

    In Dr Who his current and previous selves often meet. Even though they are not supposed to.

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